Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Obama's Agenda Cartoon


Obama agenda status report: Did he meet State of the Union goals?


As President Obama prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, voters might want to know: What ever happened to the president's proposals from last year? 
A look back shows the president has made headway toward fulfilling roughly half of his major goals from the 2015 address.
But some big ones remain unfulfilled, including enacting free community college and securing formal approval from Congress to use force against the Islamic State. And elsewhere, the president resorted to executive action when legislative proposals tanked.
The inbox is expected to pile up even more as the president delivers an address Tuesday expected to focus on gun control, national security and other final-year plans.
"The kinds of decisions that he will make over the course of next year, and that the next president will have to make during their tenure in office, will have a substantial impact on whether or not we pass on a country to the next generation of Americans that is ... as secure, that is as prosperous, and is as a fair as the United States has ever been," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, previewing the speech.
One analysis by McClatchy, the details of which were confirmed by Fox News, shows the president so far has partly or fully achieved 11 of 20 major goals he outlined in his 2015 address. This includes big wins on identity theft, net neutrality, global warming and Iran, even as he fell short in other areas.
THE MISSES
Obama, though, missed the mark entirely on a $3,000 tax credit he said would make quality child care more affordable. Though he included an expansion of the Dependent Care Tax Credit in his budget proposal, and Democrats introduced a separate bill to do roughly the same thing, neither measure passed.
Obama also fell through on convincing Congress to approve an increase in the federal minimum wage, though various states and cities have done so on their own.
As for what was pitched as a “bold new plan” for free community college, Republicans didn't bite -- calling it an expensive proposal that didn’t have enough of a payoff.
Obama unveiled his America’s College Promise plan shortly after his State of the Union address last year and included it in his initial 10-year budget proposal. It did not pass. Instead, GOP leadership pushed for more access to Pell grants – money the government gives college students that, unlike a loan, does not have to be repaid.
And on the push for an authorization to use force against ISIS, congressional leaders remain divided on whether to even take that up.
THE HITS
Obama did, however, score a partial victory on trade authority. Congress approved the “fast-track” authority which gives the president the power to negotiate big trade deals without lawmakers changing the details.
Despite this win, the president faces a steep challenge in passing the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade pact among the United States and 11 other countries.
Obama scored his biggest foreign policy win after negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran; and getting help from Senate Democrats blocking a Republican resolution rejecting it. The key provisions of the deal could be implemented in a matter of weeks.
And late last year, Obama helped secure a new international agreement on climate change, a goal he laid out in his January 2015 address.
THE EXECUTIVE ACTIONS
Where Obama struggled to pass legislation, he turned to executive actions.
For instance, when Obama vowed to make paying back student loans easier, Democratic lawmakers introduced bills aimed at reducing debt for loan borrowers. A majority of Republican lawmakers rejected them. So Obama, through executive action, expanded the federal pay-as-you-earn program which allows borrowers to cap their payment at 10 percent of their income.
Obama’s push for seven days of paid sick leave also was met with congressional resistance. So Obama issued an executive order in September requiring federal contractors to grant at least seven days of paid sick leave to their employees beginning in 2017. While some states have paid-leave laws, the U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a federal family-leave law allowing workers paid time off to take care of themselves or family members.
Prior to Obama’s executive action, federal laws required companies give leave to workers but did not require the time off to be paid.
Obama has also, in the course of the last week, turned once again to executive actions to address gun control, an issue he hammered in several past State of the Union speeches.
Obama’s 2013 speech -- which took place two months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that left 20 children and six adults dead -- focused heavily on that issue.
Since then, Obama has received strong pushback from Republican lawmakers on universal background checks as well as other gun-related measures. Last week -- in a move widely criticized by House Speaker Paul Ryan and several 2016 presidential candidates -- Obama used his executive authority to ensure background checks cover forums like gun shows and Internet sales.
Obama is likely to tout gun control changes again during Tuesday night’s address. Obama will leave a seat open next to the first lady during the address to symbolize victims of gun violence.
Yet more substantive congressional action on the subject still eludes the president. The same is true when it comes to immigration.
During his 2011 address, Obama said he was prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats “to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows.” After legislation stalled in Congress, Obama in November 2014 used his executive powers to defer deportation for an estimated 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally.
Many GOP lawmakers criticized the move as another example of executive overreach while 26 states challenged the plan in court. The Supreme Court could consider the case later this year.

Bush super PAC slams Rubio on illegal immigration, amnesty


Jeb Bush's super PAC is slamming Republican rival Marco Rubio on the contentious issue of illegal immigration and amnesty. 
The 30-second ad by Right to Rise USA, called “Vane,” depicts Rubio as a weather vane turning in the wind.
“Marco Rubio. He ran for Senate saying he opposed amnesty, then he flipped and worked with liberal Chuck Schumer to co-author the path to citizenship bill," the narrator says as the Rubio animation swivels around.
“He supported his own Dream Act and then he abandoned it,” the ad continues. ”Marco Rubio: Just another Washington politician you can’t trust.”
 
A source with the PAC told Fox News that the ad was intended to point out that Rubio has been a  “political chameleon” and lacked the leadership backbone of Bush, who governed Florida for two terms.
“No one in this race has flip-flopped on immigration more than Jeb,” said Alex Conant, communications director for Rubio’s presidential campaign.
“Jeb used to lecture Republicans about the need to support a pathway to citizenship--and then he changed his position. When Marco is president, there will be no amnesty. “
Starting Monday night, the spot will run in the early voting states of Iowa and South Carolina and on Fox News and digital platforms.

A PAC spokesman said that Right to Rise USA will spend nearly $2 million in Iowa and over $1 million in the Palmetto state in the next two weeks.

GOP candidate lineup announced for Fox Business Network debate


Fox Business Network on Monday announced the candidate lineup for the Jan. 14 Republican presidential debates – and already one candidate has said he will not participate after not qualifying for the prime-time event.
The participants qualifying for the prime-time, 9 p.m. ET debate are:
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The participants qualifying for the earlier, 6 p.m. ET debate are:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; former HP CEO Carly Fiorina; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
However, the Paul campaign said Monday night it does not plan to participate.
This is the first time Paul has not qualified for a prime-time debate and his campaign, within minutes of the announcement, issued a statement complaining about the criteria.
“By any reasonable criteria Senator Paul has a top tier campaign,” his campaign said. “He will not let the media decide the tiers of this race and will instead take his message directly to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa.”
The FBN debate lineup was decided based on the results of national, New Hampshire and Iowa polling. To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. ‎
The debate comes as front-runner Trump faces a rising challenge from Cruz, particularly in the caucus state of Iowa where the two are effectively tied for the lead.
The changing dynamic has fueled new tensions in the race, with Trump now openly questioning whether Cruz’ Canadian birth complicates his eligibility to run.
Trump’s comments have opened the door to other candidates and lawmakers exploring the issue – though Trump insists he’s only bringing it up because he’s concerned Democrats could use the issue against his GOP rival.
“I really don't know,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday.” “Does natural born mean born to the land? In that case he's not. But nobody knows what it means. … I speak well of Ted. I'm only saying that Ted has to get this problem solved because if he's running against a Democrat, and they bring a lawsuit, he's got a hell of a thing over his head.”
Cruz has brushed off calls to seek a court judgment on the issue.
“The son of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen,” Cruz said in a CNN “State of the Union” interview aired Sunday. “The internet has all sorts of fevered swamp theories.”
Legal scholars have backed Cruz in saying he would qualify as a natural-born citizen, and therefore be eligible to run, because his mother is an American citizen.
Nationally, Trump enjoys a more comfortable lead, but an interesting and fluid race is developing in early-voting New Hampshire where several candidates are in a tight battle for the No. 2 slot behind Trump – and many voters remain undecided.
The latest Fox News poll showed Trump leads with 33 percent among New Hampshire Republican primary voters – behind him are Rubio at 15 percent, Cruz at 12 percent, Bush at 9 percent and Kasich at 7 percent.
The Thursday debates will be held at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, S.C.
Anchor/Managing Editor of Business News Neil Cavuto and Anchor/Global Markets Editor Maria Bartiromo will moderate the prime-time debate; anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith will moderate the first debate.

Hillary Clinton comes out against deportation raids in break with Obama


Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton joined her rivals Monday in opposing the Obama administration's deportation raids targeting Central American immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and ignored deportation orders.
Speaking at a forum aimed at young and minority voters in Iowa, Clinton said the raids had "sown fear and division in immigrant communities across the country. People are afraid to go to work. They are afraid to send their kids to school. They are afraid to go to the hospital, or even the grocery store."
Clinton had previously drawn criticism from pro-immigration groups in 2014 when she said that unaccompanied Central American minors who had crossed the southern border should be returned to their home countries.
However, on Monday she called for government-funded counsel for unaccompanied minors in immigration court, as well as more funding for asylum officers, translators and immigration judges.
"We have laws and we must be guided by those laws,' Clinton said earlier, "but we shouldn’t have armed federal officers showing up at peoples’ homes, taking women and children out of their beds in the middle of the night."
The comments marked Clinton's clearest break with Obama, whom she served as secretary of state during the president's first term.
Clinton's rivals, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, had come out strongly against the raids when their planning was first reported last month. At the time, Sanders said he was "very distubed" by the reports, while O'Malley called the raids "mindless deportations" that were "at odds" with America's character.
The first of the raids reportedly were conducted last week in Texas and Gerogia, with more expected across the country. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the raids were designed to deter immigrants from illegally entering the U.S.
"As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration," Johnson said last week. "If you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values."

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